


The Haunted

by Innwich



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Guilt, Happy halloween, Haunted Houses, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: Soldier: 76 was wounded and waiting to be rescued by his team when he was confronted by an old ghost.





	

Talon had ambushed them.

It was the first thought that registered in Jack’s mind when he woke up behind the overturned wreckage of the Humvee that he had been driving.

The road was littered with cartridges. Skid marks stretched from the road to the grassy knoll where the Humvee was. A road sign had been blown off its rails. A dead Talon operative was lying in a ditch with a broken neck. There was no one else asides from Jack. The trucks that Winston and Reinhardt had been driving were gone. With any luck, the rest of the team might have gotten out of the ambush alive.

Jack got to his feet and winced from the pain in his abdomen. Blood was staining the front of his jacket and pants. His legs were shaking as he retrieved his pulse rifle from inside the Humvee. He had to leave. He couldn’t stay here in the open where Talon might double back, but he couldn’t go far in his condition either.

“Engage night vision,” Jack muttered. His visor didn’t react to his voice command. It must have been smashed during the ambush. “Goddammit.”

As Jack leaned on his pulse rifle and tried not to pass out from the pain in his gut, he spotted a house down the road. The windows were boarded and the roof was missing more than half of its shingles, but it had to do for now. It took five agonizing minutes to walk up to the house, and Jack’s vision was swimming when he stumbled up its porch.

Jack shot the lock off of the front door, and crawled into the room closest to the foyer. The air was musty. The room was bare except for the empty bookcases that Jack bumped into by the wall. It might have been used as a study once upon a time. Jack slumped in a corner as his legs gave out under him. His gloves were covered in a tacky coat of dust and fresh blood.

Jack unzipped his jacket to assess his injury by touch in the dark. He was bleeding heavily from his belly, but he couldn’t tell if he had sustained a gut wound or if a bullet had grazed an artery. His biotic field emitter flickered and tried to close his wounds before the last remaining biotic charge faded and his wounds reopened again. Jack tore his shirt into half and pulled his makeshift bandage taut over his stomach.

It was an uphill battle to keep his eyes open by the time his bleeding slowed. Jack switched on his communicator. He sagged in relief when it pinged and connected to the channel. At least something was working right tonight. “Winston, do you copy? It’s Morrison.”

“It’s really you? We thought we lost you in the ambush,” Winston said as an explosion went off in the background of the other end of the line. “Do you want me to patch you through to the rest of the team?”

“No, focus on the battle. Is everyone else on the team accounted for?” Jack said.

“Yeah, but Talon’s backup has arrived and we’re fighting them off,” Winston said. “Where are you?”

“I’m in a house off the road where Talon hit us. There’s a dead tree in the front. Looks abandoned,” Jack said. “I’m wounded. I won’t be able to get to where you are on my own.”

“Okay, just hang on. I’ll send someone for you as soon as I can,” Winston said.

“Roger, over,” Jack said, and clicked off the communicator.

Nothing to do except to wait. The pool of blood under him was seeping across the floor. After all these years of fighting, he didn’t think he would die alone in an abandoned house on Halloween night. Who would have thought?

Something rustled by the window. Jack tugged his pulse rifle into his lap. He couldn’t see his own hands in the dark. The wooden boards over the window blocked out all the light from the moon outside.

“I can hear you. Show yourself. I ain’t in the mood for hide-and-seek,” Jack said.

“Me neither,” Gabriel said. “But you’ve kept me seeking for a long time.”

Jack clicked off the safety on his gun. “Here to gloat before you finish the job?”

Gabriel laughed. The sound made Jack grit his teeth. Jack had hated that laugh ever since he had realized he couldn’t tell if Gabriel was laughing with him or laughing at him. “It’s only right. After all, you turned me into this thing. I’m in so much pain, and it’s your fault. I’m in so much pain.”

Jack should be used to this, to people materializing behind his back in empty rooms, to ghosts returning from the graves where they should have stayed, but his hands still shook. “You sound fine to me. From what I’ve seen from the news, you’ve been having a blast abusing your powers and killing anyone that has gotten in your way.”

“When life gives you lemons,” Gabriel said.

Jack didn’t wait for him to finish talking, and fired into the dark. The pulse munitions lit up nothing but shadows.

“Have to do better than that,” Gabriel said.

“Quit hiding like a damn coward and show yourself.” Jack fired at the left corner by the window where Gabriel’s voice came from. His shot scorched the wall. “If you want my life, you’ll have to come and take it.”

“Can’t I wish you a Happy Halloween?” Gabriel said. “You’ve always liked Halloween. Must be nice seeing kids dress up like you and aspire to follow in your footsteps so they can die in a war ten years down the line.”

“I didn’t ask for it,” Jack said sharply. He would’ve forgotten it was Halloween if he hadn’t seen the fluff piece on the evening news about kids dressed up as Overwatch agents and trick-or-treating in the suburbs. He had changed the channel as soon as he had seen that. The news of attacks launched by omnics in Russia had reignited public interest in the old Overwatch. People were talking about Overwatch as a necessary evil. The activities of the new team hadn’t gone unnoticed after Talon’s museum heist. “Kids idolize people that they know shit about. What else is new?”

“The issue isn’t what dumb kids get up to on a school night. It’s a sign of a bigger problem,” Gabriel said. “You want to hear a scary story for Halloween?”

“No.”

“You’ll like it: Two men got in a knife fight in a phone booth. No one knew what happened in it. One man came out with a cut on his hand, and the other man came out on a stretcher and lost his legs on the operating table,” Gabriel said. “Why does the man with the cut get to be known as the good guy?”

It was a different spin on an old argument, and Jack had ever only had one answer for it. “Good always triumphs over evil.”

Gabriel laughed. “Wrong. It’s because history is written by the victor.”

“You’re a broken record,” Jack snapped. “Give it up. You may think you’re the good guy, but you weren’t a good man in life and you’re worse dead.”

“Tell that to the people I saved in the crisis,” Gabriel said. “Do you need me to be a villain this badly to justify what you’ve done, Jack?”

Jack shut his eyes against the shape of his name in Gabriel’s voice. It belonged in dreams and memories, where it was easy to linger on the early days when his name had been whispered into his skin like a blessing instead of the curse that it had later become. “I don’t have to justify myself. I haven’t answered to anyone in years. I ain’t gonna start now.”

“Yes, keep telling yourself that you’re on the straight and narrow, you only have good intentions, and your path leads right to Hell. Maybe it’ll come true one day,” Gabriel said.

“I’ll make sure to keep your company.”

“No, thanks. I’ve been dead. I’m not going back.”

“Why?” Jack said. “What does the afterlife have that it spooks you? I’ll be heading there in a few years, if not tonight. Might as well tell me about the neighborhood that you’ve scoped out.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Have I told you about the auditor that I sniped from half a mile away from his home?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that. You’ve killed a lot of people,” Jack said.

“More than you know,” Gabriel agreed. “His daughter died years before his file landed on my desk. Cause of death was overdosing on sleeping pills. Time of death was a week before she was scheduled to testify against him in court. The local police couldn’t prove any foul play.”

“Which I supposed was where you came in.”

“No, people don’t end up on my hit list just because the system fails to deliver justice. The auditor was laundering money for a terrorist group,” Gabriel said. “But I had one of my agents phoned him late one night, pretending to be his dead daughter. I’ve never heard a man break down that quickly before.”

“What’s your point?” Jack ground out.

“There’s nothing after death. Ghosts don’t exist.” Gabriel sounded much closer than he had been seconds ago. He was no more than a foot away, but Jack couldn’t see him. Jack hadn’t heard him move around in the room, even though no floorboards could mask the footsteps that Gabriel’s armor plated boots made. “Only the guilty are haunted, Jack, by their conscience.”

“Well, that covers about everyone in this world. We’ve all done something we ain’t proud of in this life. Ana scratched her ghosts into her rifle but they still stayed with her,” Jack said tightly. “The few people who ain’t haunted by their conscience are the folks who don’t have one.”

“Do you really think everyone carries as much guilt with them as you do?” Gabriel said. “I can taste it in the air you breathe every time you come near me. The guilt of going unpunished for your crimes against me.”

Cold air brushed past the tip of his right ear. Jack didn’t dare turn his head. He didn’t want to see what he would find hovering at his side.

“Do you know what is worse than a wicked man?” Gabriel whispered in his ear. “It’s a wicked man that has convinced the world that he is a good man.”

“You forced my hand,” Jack hissed. “What happened to you wasn’t my fault. You made me do it.”

Claws dug into Jack’s shoulder. Gabriel was a dead weight pressed against his arm. “It’s just you here, Jack. Who are you trying to convince?”

There was a crash at the front of the house. The front door was slammed against a wall. Jack lunged for his pulse rifle, and the weight was abruptly lifted from his shoulder.

“Jack! Are you in there?” Reinhardt said.

“Look. There’s more blood,” Angela said.

“We must find him quickly,” Reinhardt said. His hulking body filled the doorframe of the study.

“Jack.” Angela shone her flashlight at him. Jack squinted at the light. He saw the inside of the room for the first time that night. The floor was covered in dust. A trail of blood led from the door to the corner where Jack was sitting. There was no sign of Gabriel. Angela knelt down next to Jack. Her staff hummed as Angela powered it up. Angela said, “Stay still. I’ll have you healed in a moment’s time.”

Jack untied the soaked stripes of cloth he had wrapped around his abdomen. The beam from Angela’s staff bathed him in the nanobiotic warmth that was shared by biotic fields. His abdomen pushed out the bullets and shrapnel lodged in it as muscle and flesh was regenerated. His skin was slick with blood but the wounds had closed without a scar.

“How do you feel?” Angela said.

“Much better. Thanks,” Jack said.

Reinhardt dropped his hammer and shield to hug Jack. “You cannot imagine how worried I was when I found that we have left you behind.”

“Gabriel was here. Find him,” Jack said. “We don’t want him to run back to Talon’s side.”

Reinhardt pulled back from the hug. “He couldn’t be here.”

“He was here. I was talking to him,” Jack said.

“Gabriel couldn’t have been here. We were fighting him and his team mere minutes ago. Ana has taken a team with her to chase him down while Angela and I come for you,” Reinhardt said.

“It’s not uncommon for the brain to become confused after the body experiences significant blood loss,” Angela said.

“I didn’t make it up,” Jack said sharply.

“No, but your body may have gone into shock,” Angela said. “You may have lost consciousness without realizing it.”

“It was one hell of a dream if that was the case,” Jack said. Gabriel’s voice and touch were too real to be a figment of his messed up imagination. It had put him on edge. He glanced to his sides as he kept expecting Gabriel to show up when he least expected it. Jack could be bait that Gabriel was using to lure his rescuers into another ambush.

“The human mind is a strange organ,” Angela said.

Reinhardt helped Jack to his feet. Jack was hauling his pulse rifle over his shoulder, when a small item dropped from his opened fist and clinked on the floor. Jack frowned and looked down through his visor. He jerked back sharply.

Lying on the floor was a grenade pin.

“Who planted that on me?” Jack said harshly.

“Jack, calm down. What is it?” Reinhardt said.

Jack gripped his pulse rifle in both hands. “Are you working with him? Both of you?”

“You are not making any sense.” Reinhardt didn’t arm himself, but he didn’t need to. His armor provided more than enough protection from gunfire and he had Angela on his side to heal him.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re gaslighting me,” Jack spat. “It’s one of Gabriel’s favorite interrogation tactics.”

“Gabriel Reyes is a traitor to everything that Overwatch stands for. I will never forgive him for what he has done, let alone work with him.” Reinhardt’s expression softened. “We are your friends, Jack.”

“It doesn’t mean crap in a war,” Jack said, but his conviction was faltering. Reinhardt and Angela weren’t acting hostile; they just looked confused.

Reinhardt glanced at Angela. “Did he hit his head?”

“Not that I can see. Besides, my staff should have healed all injuries,” Angela said. She took Jack’s pulse. “A little fast. Are you feeling alright?”

Reinhardt was gazing at Jack with furrowed brows. “There is no shame in admitting weaknesses.”

They didn’t know. They wouldn’t be looking him in the eye if they had known what he had done.

Maybe he had passed out and confused a nightmare with reality. The grenade pin could have been left behind before Jack had gotten here. He didn’t know what he had dropped earlier but he had no interest in looking for it.

Jack put his hand to his head. The fight had left him. He had been riding on an adrenaline high and his body was wrecked with bone-deep weariness that made him feel every creak in his joints as the high ebbed away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s been a rough night.”

“It’s been rough for everyone. Don’t worry about it.” Angela squeezed his arm.

“Thanks.”

“Can you walk? Do you need me to give you a lift? It is no bother,” Reinhardt said.

Jack waved him off. “I’m fine. I’ve got some fight left in me.”

“We should go. The others are waiting for us,” Angela said. “You’ll feel better once you get some fluid in you.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. He stepped over the grenade pin on the floor like kids avoided stepping on cracks in the pavement. He wouldn’t feel better. It wasn’t blood loss that was bothering him. He wished he could take out his conscience and amputate it like a gangrenous limb, the last thing that was keeping him away from the deep end that Gabriel had taken a swan dive into. It would make his life a lot easier.

“Yes, let us leave,” Reinhardt said. He picked up his hammer and shield, and shivered in his armor. “It is far too chilly in this house.”


End file.
